Desiderata (Excerpts).
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story.
Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
No less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
Keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.
--- Max Ehrmann, 1927

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Performance Pay for Teachers.

Kia-ora

On the face of it, It seems fair to reward people who perform better than others with more pay.

If anyone can come up with a fair and valid performance measurement. Fine.

However even in the private sector this is fraught with difficulty.
Unless performance has a single clear measurement business has a poor record with targeting performance pay.

Sales may be OK. As you can measure performance by the number of sales. But, what about the back office contribution to sales. The receptionists contribution.

In less easily defined jobs like management, performance pay has failed to deliver better performance.
In fact higher pay to top management and higher performance pay, in British research, correlates with the worst performing companies.

What measure do you use. Return to shareholders. It is easy to maximise return to shareholders short term by sacrificing the long term viability of the company. By then the manager has taken the money and run.
Production. Was it the manager or the staff?
Sales. Was it better training, better support, better product or sales team performance.

While I would be the first to agree that there are some time serving teachers who should not be there. I’ve seen those people in many other professions also.

There are also stars who stand out, however the majority, like most professions, are dedicated, hardworking people who try to do their best for their students. This is constantly made more difficult by power seeking politicians attempting to impose their latest fad.

If performance pay is such a good idea how about tying MP's pay to the average wage. 5 times the median wage with an 85% tax abatement rate on any other income would seem about right.